Search results

What, no love for Xvarts? Someone might think that the idea of evil smurfs in D&D was silly or something...

I think the undead ghoul also takes inspiration from movie zombies. Zombies in Haitian folklore do not eat people, nor are they rotted. They can easily pass for dazed, unhealthy people. George Romero fused the idea of a living corpse with the flesh-eating ghoul of folklore, however, because it...

I voted yes on Sex and Gore. A far as I'm concerned, the "let's make it kid friendly" movement that started with 2nd edition is what almost destroyed D&D in the 90s. Make D&D dangerous and disreputable again, and you'll see how the game's popularity will improve. Art that doesn't piss anybody...

I can't understand why the game should have Halflings at all, if they aren't anything at all like Tolkien's hobbits? The new Halflings don't resemble anything from legend, myth, or fantasy literature. That seems to be a trend with WOTC lately, I guess so they can claim to have created new...

There were in fact many medieval legends that likened Hell to the inside of vast Dragon. To enter the underworld one was literally swallowed by Hell's mouth. It's very common image in ecclesiastical art of the time.

Bravo to the Original Poster! In my own campaign, players fill out a Character Profile with the following questions: Where was the character born? Who are the character’s parents? How many siblings does the character have, and what are their names? How was the character educated? Does the...

My favorite fantasy city is Tanith Lee's Paradys. A fictionalized, dark fantasy version of Paris, it's the central setting of her excellent "Secret Books of Paradys" series. The home base of the PCs in my campaign is heavily inspired by Paradys. "Malice in Saffron", one of the stories in the...

In my campaign, a Wizard spell with Verbal, Somatic and Material components will typically require casters to trace a sign in the air with the material component and then cast it away, then assume a particular stance as their hands make mudra-like signs, and they intone an incantation in a...

You're right. The 18,000 figure is for the 1100's though. By the 1300s London was crammed with 100,000 people, although it was spilling outside the walls. That kind of crowding is partly what made the Plague so bad when it hit. The other thing is, historically over-crowded cities are (IMHO)...

Believe it or not, that's still not as crowded as historical towns would get. Figure the same population in about half to 1/3 of that area. Medieval urban populations density was about 30,000 per square mile. Yes, that meant people living on top of each other and essentially in each other's...

What you are describing sounds like the situation the original, 1st Edition Greyhawk boxed set was perfect for. Before TSR decided to make all the modules part of some kind of official canon, and lay a metaplot on top of the world, Greyhawk was meant to be a vaguely defined setting that would...

History has already asked the question of what happens when people feel like the outside world is hazardous, they have limited agricultural technology, and transportation is slow. The answer is they cluster together, and live as close to each other as they can. The pattern held true in places as...

Absolutely. The only reason why modern American towns are not surrounded by farmland is the existence of automobiles. All pre-modern towns and cities were surrounded by farms, for miles around. When it takes 8 farmers to feed one non-farmer (based on pre-modern agricultural yields), and it takes...

Which makes little less sense in a POL setting. Trading towns assume lots of traffic on well-protected roads. I haven't seen the DMG yet, but I feel safe making some predictions about the starting town: The designers forgot to put enough (or any) farm land around the town The streets are laid...

1st Edition characters were expected to spend many years to gain 10th level. Since the 1st Edition DMG suggested advancing the in-game timeline by at least as many days as its been since the last gaming session, a player could be easily using the same character for 2 or 3 in-game and real-world...

My personal experience with D&D's social perception come from being around the late 80s/early 90s metal scene. There, it seemed like every male also played D&D, and as long as your primary social interaction was with those same people, there was no stigma attached to the game at all. Many of us...

You're right. They weren't generally famished, and in good times could actually eat pretty well. But existing medieval documents make it clear that the agricultural population was very large relative to the urban population. Right again. But beacuse they didn't actually know why sealing in...

"Blobs of Light" pretty much sums up what real medieval settlement patterns were like. It's hard for modern Americans, used to private lives, sprawling suburbs and isolated homes, to really understand how medieval people actually lived. Medieval settlement patterns were dictated by 3 facts: 1)...

I am a gamer. I primarily play D&D and D&D variants, however. I am DMing a Castles and Crusades game right now, but I'll play in any edition of D&D. I won't DM 3.x, however, because I consider it too rules heavy for my taste. I love Gygaxian-style fantasy as embodied in 1st Edition AD&D, which...

Some more entries... Ramble On - Led Zeppelin. It even mentions Mordor and Gollum! Immigrant Song - Led Zeppelin. Barbarians from the North! Gallow's Pole - Led Zeppelin (although do yourself a favor and listen to Leadbelly's Gallis Pole). The perfect theme for a rascally Bard. Any Manowar...